


How Leonard Learned to Ignore Jim's Puppy-Dog Eyes (or How Jim Knew Bones Was a Keeper)

by pb_jwaffles



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Comedy, Crack, Drunkenness, M/M, Pets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-08
Updated: 2012-04-08
Packaged: 2017-11-03 06:41:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/378452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pb_jwaffles/pseuds/pb_jwaffles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim has procured a rather strange pet. Thinking the creature is harmless, Leonard lets Jim keep it. Of course, he's wrong and he ends up regretting his decision.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Leonard Learned to Ignore Jim's Puppy-Dog Eyes (or How Jim Knew Bones Was a Keeper)

**Author's Note:**

> This is a bit of crack, and a bit of I don't even know what. 
> 
> I have no idea when I wrote this, or for what, but I found it sitting on my hard drive. I'm fairly certain it was for something over at the Jim and Bones community on livejournal, but I can't be sure. 
> 
> Some knowledge of the TOS episode "Devil in the Dark" may be required to fully understand this silly piece of fiction. If you haven't seen that episode, watch it, if only to give yourself fifty minutes of something ridiculous to laugh at.

Bones looked up from the PADD he was reading when the door to his quarters opened abruptly and Jim stumbled through, clutching something wrapped in his leather jacket against his chest.

“Bones, you gotta help me!” 

“What is it? Are you hurt?” He let a moment of panic flood his chest until he saw Jim shake his head vigorously.

“Well, what is it then?”

“I don’t think he’s breathing!” Jim gestured to the thing in his arms.

“Dammit Jim, how many times have I told you not to bring strange animals onto the ship?”

Jim had three weaknesses: Bones, the crew of the Enterprise, and little abandoned and unwanted animals. Like the zebra Jim decided to liberate from the zoo. His reasons for smuggling the poor animal onto the Enterprise were, to this day, still unclear to Bones. He was eventually able to coax Jim into giving little Adonis (who named a zebra Adonis?) back to the zoo after almost half of the uniforms he kept in Jim’s closet ended up missing, save for a few small shreds of zipper and buttons. Apparently Adonis was partial to cotton and polyester, but hated plastic and metal. Eventually even Jim had to admit that someone might notice that there were large bites taken out of the sleeves of his gold shirt.

And that was the most normal of all the animals he tried to smuggle on board. Unfortunately, most of the other “harmless little creatures” Jim saved either liked snapping off fingers between their razor-sharp teeth, sloughed off human skin, or left annoyingly itchy blue rashes in unwanted places. So whatever Jim was trying to keep this time was going to have to leave post-haste, because Bones still remembered that rash. Just thinking about the two weeks he wasn't able to sit down comfortably made him shudder.

He realized Jim was babbling “—had a Royal Flush so I won but I don’t think he’s breathing and you gotta help him Bones. I swear he’s harmless.”

“Harmless my ass,” he replied, thinking of singed eyebrows and large purple bruises.

But then Bones made the mistake of looking at Jim’s face, which was stupid, because Jim was giving him _the look_. Bones never could say no when he looked into Jim’s pleading, blue, puppy-dog eyes, looking like he was just waiting for all his hopes and dreams to get crushed. It seemed that Bones’s one weakness was Jim.

Sighing, Bones got to his feet and pulled the medkit out from under his bed before approaching Jim and the potentially dangerous creature in his arms. It became apparent with every step he took that Jim was very drunk. It smelled like he had just taken a very long bath in several bottles of cheap Andorian Ale. Bones' eyes strayed the corner of Jim's mouth, which was still stained blue from the potent drink. He was overcome by the urge to lick the offending spot away from Jim's lips, to keep licking until all he could see was the pink skin underneath and all he could taste was Jim.

Jim swayed dangerously to the left, but caught himself before he fell. It brought Bones quickly back to reality. Regardless of what happened to Jim's new pet, it looked like Bones would still have to take care of Jim once this was all over.

Bones motioned to his empty desk. “Well, put him there and I’ll see what I can do.”

He dug through the medkit for his tricorder and heard something heavy land with a thud against his desk.

Bones turned to the patient resting there and frowned. “Jim, this is a rock.”

“Nope. That’s Algernon. I won him in a poker game.” 

Bones looked back at…Algernon. It was still a rock. A perfectly round grey sphere, but a rock nonetheless. Then he stared back at Jim, who still seemed dead serious about his concerns over his new “pet”.

“How much have you had to drink?”

Jim frowned rubbed a hand across his face. “I’m not drunk!” he protested loudly.

Bones rolled his eyes. “’Course you’re not.”

“Are you gonna help Algernon? He’s not breathing.”

“Of course he’s not breathing! He’s a rock.” 

“You mean he’s dead?” Horror spread across Jim’s face.

“No he’s not dead. And he’s not a ‘he’. _It_ is not alive!”

“Well, fix him! You can fix him, can’t you?”

“Dammit Jim, I’m a doctor not a…a bricklayer!”

But arguing with a drunk Jim and trying to get him to understand was like trying to get a Klingon to bathe. Utterly futile. So as Jim continued to babble about performing CPR on little Algernon, Bones readied a hypo and took advantage of Jim’s distracted state, plunging it into his neck.

“—loves to cuddle. Can we kee—OW! Son of a bitch. That wasn’t very—” And then he collapsed in Bones’ arms, blessedly silent and unconscious.

As Bones struggled to manhandle Jim into bed, he thought about Algerno—that damn rock. Actually, it might make a good pet. It didn’t need to eat or be groomed, it wouldn’t make a mess of the carpet or leave unsightly rashes on his skin, and it would never die.

So he tucked Jim into bed and collected Algernon from the desk. He dropped it on the end of the bed before climbing in and pulling Jim solidly against his chest. With the warmth of Jim’s back against him, it wasn’t long before Bones felt himself succumbing to his body’s pleas for sleep.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Jim woke with a massive headache, a headache only made worse by the yelling Bones was doing in his ear and the rather insistent way he was shaking him.

“Bones, stop. I’m gonna throw up on you,” he mumbled.

“Oh no, Jim, you need to come take care of Algernon.”

“What? Who the hell is Algernon?” Jim cracked open an eye. Bones had on his pissed-off face, which wasn’t a good sign, but Jim couldn’t think of anything he’d done to deserve it. Of course, there was a sizeable memory gap between sometime the night before and the present.

“Not who, but what. What the hell is he?”

Jim finally sat up slowly and rubbed his eyes. Then he saw the end of the bed and rubbed his eyes again. Nope, still there, or rather, _not_ there. The entire bottom part of the bed was missing, completely disintegrated to nothing but a black spot on the floor. For the first time, Jim noticed that with the legs gone, he and Bones were sleeping on an incline.

“Holy shit, Bones. What happened to the bed?”

“That was Algernon. I was wrong. He’s not just a rock after all. And he has the ability to shoot acid.”

“Who the hell is Algernon?” Jim asked again, annoyed that the question, which seemed pretty important in light of the scorch marks on the floor, still hadn't been answered.

Bones didn't have time to answer the question. At that moment, Algernon decided to make his appearance, crashing through Bones' closet. Apparently, Algernon was what looked like a giant pile of orange and brown vomit. An _angry_ pile of vomit, judging by the ferocious way it kept going, tunneling through the thick bulkhead of Bones’ quarters and barreling down the corridor.

And just like that, a light bulb clicked on in Jim’s memory and he vaguely recalled a poker game and winning something called a Horta from some strange guy in a bar. There might have been warnings about acid baths and rapid tunneling.

“Oh shit.” Jim turned to look at Bones, who was still gaping at the giant hole in his wall. “You’re not going to help me catch him, are you?”

Bones whipped his head around, one eyebrow performing the usual acrobatics just under his hairline. “Do you remember the rash, Jim? Because I sure as hell do!”

“Got it.” Jim got out of bed and ran to fetch his pants and boots. As he hopped into his jeans, he heard Bones sigh behind him and pull open his communicator.

“McCoy to Scott. We’ve got another one.”

The man on the other end groaned. “Is it a zebra again?”

“Nope. Something that looks like it was somebody’s lunch.”

“All right, I’ll keep an eye out for it. Scott out.”

“Come on, Jim. Let’s catch this thing before it hurts someone.” Jim smiled. That’s how he knew Bones loved him. No matter how many times he screwed up did something stupid, Bones was there to help him fix it. Helping him chase after a dangerous vomit-creature that could shoot acid? A sign of true love.

Bones pulled Jim’s hand into his and squeezed it once before dragging him through the giant hole in the wall and down the corridor. As they followed the path of Algernon's rage-filled destruction of the Enterprise, Jim couldn't keep the grin from his face. 

The End

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, Jim's "pet" is a Horta. If you don't know what a Horta is, please take this time to google "TOS Horta" or something similar and look at the images page. You will not be disappointed. I guarantee it.


End file.
